There appears to be a She’s the Man easter egg in Channing Tatum’s latest movie — but Blink Twice and you may have missed it.
The psychological thriller — which marks Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut — follows two cocktail waitresses as they join tech billionaire Slater King (played by Tatum) and his group of friends on a private island. The two women quickly realize, though, that everything is not as it seems on their tropical getaway.
About halfway through the film, Simon Rex’s character, Cody, who is Slater’s best friend from high school and personal chef, breaks his nose, leaving a bloody mess. His solution? Tampons up his nostrils.
Fans of Tatum, 44, may recognize the hilarious technique from his comedy with Amanda Bynes, She’s the Man.
In the 2006 movie, Bynes’ character, Viola, who is pretending to be her twin brother, Sebastian, so she can play soccer at an all-male prep school, almost has her cover blown when Tatum’s character, Duke, finds tampons in her bag.
When he questions her, Viola quickly improvises a reason for hiding female sanitary products.
“I get really bad nosebleeds,” she explains, going on to demonstrate how to stick tampons up her nose to stop the bleeding, adding “Beckham does it all the time.”
While Duke and his roommates initially laugh at Viola’s innovation, she later finds him with a tampon up his own nose.
With Tatum as the lead of Blink Twice with a producing credit on the film, the creative use of tampons has to be a nod to his earlier film.
While the new movie shares some humorous aspects with She’s the Man — Tatum’s comedic talent cannot be understated — it a complete tonal departure from the actor’s previous works. The film is a psychological thriller with an underlying dark humor, and Kravitz — who got engaged to Tatum last year after sparking a romance while working together on the film — wrote the character of Slater with the actor in mind.
“[He was the one] I thought of when I wrote this character,” she told Deadline in 2021. “I just knew from Magic Mike and his live shows, I got the sense he’s a true feminist and I wanted to collaborate with someone who was clearly interested in exploring this subject matter.”
At the film’s premiere earlier this month, Kravitz took to the stage to gush over her fiancé while expressing gratitude to those who helped make the film.
“From producing to performing to pep talks to holding my head or my feet while I cried on the bathroom floor because I thought I f–ked it all up, thank you for letting me be a complete OCD psychopath, control freak,” she said. “Thank you for your patience, making this film with you has been an awfully great adventure. Thank you for trusting me to ‘female direct’ you. It’s really very cool to get to make a movie but when you get to do it with the love of your life, it’s even cooler.”
